nice friday

We had a fun field trip. We got to play at being international art thieves - ones who steal synagogue art and update it with the names of recent donors and then give it back, so possibly "thieves" isn't the best word ever - but fun anyway. That shul had a huge and terrible pun, thus: the Torahs are usually kept in a cupboard referred to as an "ark" (as in "ark of the tabernacle," right?). This ark was made to look like a giant ship sailing towards the congregation. Groan.

Then we went down into New Jersey to a huge shul which had huge Torahs which wanted assessing so the shul could see how much it would cost to repair them, and then the shul would decide what to do about them. They'd had water problems and humidity problems, and some of the Torahs were not very happy. Some of them were quite happy and only wanted a bit of cleaning. The saddest one had lots of crinkly bits which would have to be re-done entirely cos the letters had all fallen off. One of them was very pretty indeed. One of them had funny klaf, where it hadn't gone whitish like parchment usually does, but translucent. Not under the writing - at the edges, where it'd been cut close to fat deposits, apparently.

There was one which had about six different types of writing in it - had presumably been cobbled together from parts of other Torahs. Interesting, although not always the prettiest. And there was one where the sofer had very cheekily extended a letter peh. You can extend lamed and hey and various other letters, but peh?! It looked odd. Oh, and they gave us ice-cream.

and nice weekend

livredor and self went to MJNH's for nice lunk, after sleeping until nearly 11am. These five-hour days really set the program for Shabbat - sleep, daven, eat, sleep, sleep, sleep, daven, eat, sleep, etc. After lots of sleeping we did some learning, which was nice. livredor thinks interestingly and hasn't been moulded into the yeshivish mindset, so we not only talked about Torah but even about God!

Today we went to the Cloisters, which is high up Manhattan, in Inwood. It's the part of the Metropolitan Museum which holds its mediaeval sculptures and random bits of churches, and what's cool is that the building has basically been constructed around the artefacts, so it's designed to look like a lot of bits of monastery strung together, and houses various lintels and capitals and other architectural features, and some interior furnishings. It's kind of funny, because I'm rather used to just having that sort of thing around at home, so seeing a mediaeval door in a wall isn't so exciting as all that - likewise, some of the windows basically looked like parts of college - but some of the interior stuff was very funky. There were some completely cool bits of devotional carving, notably a representation of the Trinity which had God sitting down, resting an occupied cross on his lap, biting the tail of the Holy Spirit, in the form of a dove sort of pecking Jesus' head. Various other things, but that was the most memorable. Oh, and a picture of pregnant Mary in her house, with some funky rainbow angels around the place. A blue-and-white fringed stripy thing hanging up, which I think is supposed to be a tallit, but livredor thinks isn't. Churches visible out of the window (?!), and generally rather lovely.